Human
Doughnut Dreams
Whilst economics can seem to be in the realm of those with expert knowledge and power in the ivory towers of big business and government, we know that the rules, codes, and norms are man-made, written by people. This means that they can be re-written, re-imagined, and re-made together.
The doughnut economic framework highlights a list of social foundations. For example, Housing, Food, Water, Energy, Education, Health, etc. We asked people if there were any important social goals missing from the framework. Goals that would help bring us all into the safe and just space.
See The Big Picture Create to Regenerate Be Agnostic About Growth
Change
Goal See The Big Picture
The
The Doughnut Economic Framework Nature
Get Savvy with Design to Distribute
Nurture Human Nature
Here is what we found are the Doughnut Dreams, co-created with local people:
Spotlighting to Work That Is Already Moving Us Into The Doughnut
For our first printed newspaper, we thought it would be incredibly powerful to spotlight the work that moves us closer towards that safe and just reality for people near and far, for the environments close to us and across the globe. It’s the kind of work that gives us and many others a lot of hope and a sense of possibility for the future, as well as making things more beautiful in the present, while helping to keep people and places safe and healthy through the power of collective care, energy, vision and work.
Over the last few years, we have been working alongside, and admiring from afar, many of the pioneers showing in practice the everyday green shoots of an new economy. Over the last few months we spent time with people to learn about the work they are doing now, and their hopes and dreams for the future, in relationship to social and ecological ideas, using the doughnut as a useful framework to explore this.
We recognise there are countless people, organisations and collectives that could be featured in all their glory, and acknowledge that we are starting with a small slice of around 20 examples. Building on series such as On The Settee, and on the work of local community newspapers like ‘Voices of Ladywood’, we’d love The Good News of B16 to be a platform that can spotlight the amazing people and things happening in the neighbourhood and beyond over the long term. This newspaper could be a step forward as part of a network of stories of a place that we’d love to build on together, into 2023 and beyond.
Nurture Human Nature with Systems Get Savvy with Systems Design to Distribute Distribute Create
to Regenerate
Be Agnostic About Growth Change The Goal See The Big Picture
Bertz Associates
Gavin Rogers
CIVIC SQUARE
The Patchwork Meadow
Suze Carter Meadow In My Garden Birmingham Settlement
David Gregory-Kumar Birmingham Open Spaces Forum
Friends of Jewellery Quarter Cemeteries
Karis Neighbour Scheme
Mind Body Spirit Partnership Early Help
Centric Community Projects
Lunar Society
Kate Hawkins ERCO
Friends of Edgbaston Reservoir
ERCO Iris Bertz
Karolina Medwecka-Piasecka
Afroflux
Charlotte with Ink
MAIA Group
Sara Kenny Nightlife Outreach
Free Black University
Birmingham Open Media
Friends of the Earth
Samuel Ewell
Roundhouse
Social Work Teams
The Ladywood Project Karis Medical Centre
Incredible Surplus Living Well Consortium
ERCO
Newbigin Community Trust
Nishkam Centre
BBC Wildlife Trust
Birmingham & Black Country (BBC) Wildlife Trust
Joy Fifer Peter Shirley
Coleshill Farm
Chris Baines
Bertz Associates Artscoop Birmingham City Council
Birmingham Open Spaces
Friends of Edgbaston Reservoir
Friends of the Earth
Birmingham City Council
Oasis Academy
Members
Sharon Thomson + Ian Ward
Share Shack / The Active Wellbeing Society
Barnes Close, Bromsgrove
Canal and River Trust
Warm Earth Benson Community School
Staff & Volunteers
Ann Gallagher
Books 4 Kids
Ladywood Network Group
Refugee Action
Sport England Birmingham City Council
Incredible Surplus Foodcycle
Slow Food Birmingham + Eat Make Play
Taraki Experts By Experience
The Heera Foundation
Eat Make Play
Slow Food Network Spring To Life ACORN Tenants Union
Gary Smith
The Active Wellbeing Society
Uplands Allotment Samina Gulzar
Ray Trowe-Poole Food Justice Network Incredible Surplus Food Trails with Karolina Medwecka-Piasecka
Newbigin Community Trust National Survivor User Network
Birmingham City Council CIVIC SQUARE Warm Earth Newbigin Community Trust BBC Wildlife Trust
Al-Abbas Islamic Centre Birmingham Settlement Use-It
Eat Make Play Birmingham Children’s Trust
Friends of Edgbaston Reservoir BBC Wildlife Trust
Sikh Alliances Yorkshire
Balsall Heath Nature Map
Act on Energy Footsteps Simeon Shtebunaev Dark Matter Labs
Bahu Trust Architects Climate Action Network
We asked the spotlighted people who they were connected to and who was inspiring them. As they mapped their ecosystems they began with people and organisations who had supported them on their journey so far, and then mapped those that they wanted to connect with in the future. Everyone had a different role to play, with their own focus and skills, and came together to support the work that would support them in kind. We’ve mapped a few of the constellations on this page for you to see.
Neighbourhood Network Scheme Roundhouse Active Wellbeing Society Incredible Surplus Birmingham Settlement Institute for Social Enterprise A is for Activism Salman Mirza Palestine Action JJ Bola Lucy Clark Sifa Fireside
Climania Birmingham City University Retrofit Balsall Heath AHRC GAP Arts Gavin Rogers Claudia Carter John Christophers MAIA Vegan Vybes Healing Justice London Jack Ky Tan Joon-Lynn Goh Hanna Thomas Uose Nabil Al-Kinani The Nap Ministry Freedom & Balance Onyx Resolve Retrofit Balsall Heath
Spotlighting: Iris Bertz and Bertz Associates
ertz Associates is an arts and cultural organisation based in Edgbaston, Birmingham, that develops inter-cultural art and education projects.
As you walk around Edgbaston Reservoir, taking in the wide open sky line and the sound of wildlife and wind in the trees, you will eventually walk by an old abandoned building. This is the Tower Ballroom, and it has been a hub of joyful community activity for over 150 years, hosting everything from dancing to roller skating, from boxing legends to theatre shows. In recent years, it has been scheduled to be demolished to make space for private housing.
Iris Bertz, an artist and creative practitioner, had lived in the neighbourhood for a decade, but didn’t really know the area until lockdown, when she became hyper local. “Gavin and I both shared a love of dance,” Iris says.
So during lockdown in 2020, Gavin Rogers, an artist and local resident, wrote a bid for Arts Council Funding to collect the memories and dreams of the Tower Ballroom. Since then, Bertz Associates has organised multiple projects with local people, emerging artists & creative practitioners of colour to amplify their voices and histories, highlighting the role we play in regenerating the neighbourhood, in particular in response to gentrification.
To understand the work that Iris does now, we need to cast our minds back to where Iris grew up: in Germany in the 1960s, an era that followed the Nazi occupation during WWII. “We grew up with this idea that whatever authority tells you, you have to question it under your own value systems, because it could be wrong.”
Fast forward to 1999, when Iris came to the UK. She noticed a contradiction in society’s narrative around young people. Authorities said they weren’t engaging with their communities, but as far as Iris could see, there were no desirable spaces for them to contribute to. She also saw a gap in the careers of emerging artists, and started asking questions about the role of large organisations. “What happens to those young people they work with? What are the next steps?”
“
constantly break rules. I’m very much somebody who thinks about what needs to be done.”
Iris set up Bertz Associates to provide space and support for artists to work on inter-generational creative projects about their neighbourhood. Through hosting local conversations, screenings and walks, she has given people permission to grow their own ideas, be their own advocates and find their own political voice.
But the best part for Iris is what ripples out from their time together. Taking an idea from discussion to reality has empowered the creative community around Bertz Associates to look forward to making new and existing storytelling projects with each other. “A lot of people in our network work together now,” Iris says, “that’s where the true beauty happens”.
What’s Next?
After two years of creative projects, Iris has fallen in love with film-making, and seeks to write stories of women refugees in Ladywood and the relationship between health and identity. We asked her what feels more possible now. “We’re going to make some amazing work,” she said, grinning. “I know it.”
You can view stories of the Tower Ballroom, or add your own, via the Bertz Associates website www.bertzassociates.net
Moving into the Doughnut
We asked Iris to circle the areas of the Doughnut Economic framework that her work fits into, and asked about the role her work is playing in this, in her own words. We’ve mapped a few of them below:
Imagination: “I’d like to live in a neighbourhood that dares to dream”
Political Voice: “I think our role is in heregrowing people to be advocates. That’s really important to me.”
Education: “If you affect one young person or one person, it can have massive waves. I put it out there as my belief.”
Community: “A lot of people in our network work together now. That’s where the true beauty happens”
I’d like to live in a neighbourhood that
hen you walk through the gates onto Edgbaston Reservoir, in the heart of Birmingham, it’s as if you’ve been transported to another place and time.
This hidden gem, part of the cities’ industrial heritage and canal networks, has been a safe haven for local wildlife, families, joggers, cyclists and people from all walks of life for many years.
In 1990, Carol Booth-Davis was a young mum who discovered plans to start a waterskiing hub on the reservoir. She knew that it would threaten the local wildlife, as well as the peaceful qualities of the site. Carol and the Friends of Edgbaston Reservoir came together to protect site, and have been successfully campaigning to keep the natural beauty of the place for over 30 years.
In that time, they’ve disrupted plans for a Marina, saw the Lodge upgraded to a Grade II listed building to protect it’s historical and architectural significance, and in 2006, they successfully campaigned against housing being built on the site of the Tower Ballroom and saw the reservoir upgraded from a site of National Importance to a Local Nature Reserve, increasing the need to preserve and protect the environment around it.
and many other local organisations, and was based on lots of community engagement, with support from designer Daniel Blyden of CIVIC SQUARE. It set out a clear vision for the reservoir, linking to the Council’s own relevant policies.
The North Edgbaston Councillor got the Edgbaston Reservoir Consortium representatives, including FER, a meeting with the leader of the City Council, because opposition to the council plans wasn’t going away.
“The Edgbaston Reservoir Consortium put forward the argument, and [the Council] have published it themselves, that people’s wellbeing and health has a price tag to them, in preventing health issues. They’ve published a document saying how valuable green space is, so they know the arguments.”
Chris adds that as an alternative vision for the reservoir, instead of housing, the site could become “a leading edge shop window for all kinds of green technology,”
FER joined forces with the Edgbaston Reservoir Collaborative (ERCO), who had arranged pop-ups on the reservoir talking to people at the weekends who actually used the space. Chris tells us ERCO talked to nearly 600 people face to face and hardly anyone said they wanted housing there. Carol adds, “Volunteers were clicking away as well, recording numbers, and data because we knew we needed evidence.
In April 2022, the Revised Master Plan was put forward by the Council for consultation. “The North Edgbaston Councillor got the Edgbaston Reservoir Consortium representatives, including FER, a meeting with the leader of the City Council because opposition to the Council plans wasn’t going away,” Carol says. The biggest threat to the Local Nature Reserve still comes from the Council’s plan to build housing on the site of the Tower Ballroom, which the Friends, together with ERCO and others, are ready to fight.
What’s Next?
Friends of Edgbaston Reservoir have been disrupting the planning process, sharing information and building the community network for over thirty years, and may yet continue to do so for thirty years more, if people like us are ready to pick up the baton.
You can connect with them and offer your time, energy and support on social media. Twitter @edgresfriends
Moving into the Doughnut
We asked the Friends of Edgbaston Reservoir to circle the areas of the Doughnut Economic framework that their work fits into, and asked about the role their work is playing in this, in their own words.
Health: “Bigger picture health, our spiritual health, our mental health, our physical health, you know, all of that is absolutely paramount.”
Then, in 2012, the local council announced another plan for a tourist and sports centre. True to their mission, the Friends group “gate-crashed that meeting” to let them know that the reservoir was a civic space, and that users needed to be part of those discussions. “Well then,” the leader said, “we’ll need a proper plan.” In 2019, the latest Masterplan was put forward by the Council.
In response to the need for an alternative plan, Carol and Chris Vaughn, a key member of the Friends group, started to focus on community engagement, “because we felt the planners weren’t doing it,” Carol says. “An ad-hoc group of people who were interested set up a series of meetings at the Memorial Hall to inform reservoir users of the plans.”
The alternative community-led plan, was developed by a consortium of people, which included the Friends of Edgbaston Reservoir
Social Equity: “We are divided into neighbourhoods that are rich and poor and the reservoir is not that.”
Access to Nature: “It’s a place people can have a picnic and sit, and its a respite and a holiday for a lot of people. Giving ownership of part of it to a private enterprise, will out of necessity make a huge change to who owns it. And we believe the people own itwhoever those people are that use it.”
Justice: “We are trying to get justice for the wildlife. They don’t have a voice, you know, and we’re trying to protect their habitat.”
Political Voice: “We’ve been working for many years and we are recognised within the council.”
Air Pollution: “Trees do filter kind of pollution and improve air quality in the environment.”
whoever that “us” might be to get out there and talk to people.
It was down to
Spotlighting: Chris Vaughan, Carol Booth-Davies and Friends of Edgbaston Reservoir
Spotlighting: Simeon Shtebunaev and the Climate Action Board Game Climania
limania: The Climate Action Game is a board game created to build awareness of urban planning and retrofit within the context of the climate crisis.
“You can play cooperatively, and everybody can win. So you have a lot of happy faces,” says Simeon, co-creator of the game, “or you can play competitively. And more often than not, when playing competitively, everybody loses.”
The aim was to generate conversations in Balsall Heath to feed into COP26 while it was happening in Glasgow. “That’s why they wanted to develop a game, which could be freely downloadable, freely accessible, so somebody is actually going to sit on a table, play with a politician in their house, and then maybe change their mind that way.” Since March this year, the Climania game has had over 100 downloads across 50 countries.
Working with Young People
Simeon Shtebunaev, a doctoral researcher at the Birmingham City University, was working on a research project, collecting local knowledge from young people that live in Balsall Heath about their built environment and climate change. “We wanted to do it through a more intuitive and engaging and fun way, rather than just sitting them in a room and talking to them saying ‘look, your buildings are old’ he says, when we ask him about his work. The idea to co-create a board game with young people aged 14-18 came out of this.
Simeon and Claudia Carter, Associate Professor in Environmental Management, got the funding to make the game. Simeon was keen to recruit a group that was representative of the biggest communities in Balsall Heath, including Yemeni, Bangladesh, Pakistani, Eastern European. “We worked with 13 young people, and we paid them, which really made the recruitment very hard, because in two days, the form had 50 people applying.”
One of the issues that captured young people’s attention was retrofit, but not because of the impact on carbon emissions. Two of them noticed that there are currently not many existing retrofit companies to meet the needs of the UK’s housing market, and saw an opportunity to start their own business. “Why flip properties when we can actually set up a retrofit company?”
Developing Climania
The GAP Arts in the old Print Works gave the Climania group a facilitated space to work with the young people for two hours each over nine workshops to develop the game. They trained young people to be researchers for a day and sent them off to interview their family on what climate issues were actually important in the area. They’d talk about
what they thought was most important, and why. Followed by a gaming workshop to understand why games and gamification might be useful in design, to determine what type of game would be the most impactful. Simeon was keen to have the game played in person “because the whole point of the game was not to finish it. For us, the discussion that comes out of it is a lot more interesting.”
What’s Next?
Simeon is always committed to sharing knowledge about issues which might have been overlooked by the traditional academic establishment, and is interested in how we collect the experience of young people and channel that into policy. “You can actually understand a lot more about what’s happening in the community if you talk to the children and teenagers,” says Simeon. “It’s a reflection, in my view, of how society works. If you’re a young person and you feel disenfranchised, and you feel sad and you feel tired and you feel stressed, then that’s not on you, because you’ve literally just walked into all these other systems, you haven’t created them. So you’re just reacting to what is happening in a very natural and very honest way.”
They then had several prototype sessions with input from professionals and other people, such as John Christophers, the architect behind the Zero Carbon House of Balsall Health. “They were really, really helpful in the testing of the game, once we finished the prototype.” Simeon also recalls playing a game with XR Balsall Health, where most of the people there knew a lot about retrofit and climate change already, “but they would spend ten minutes discussing and exchanging information. And this is what for us was important, because it is a climate engagement tool.”
Simeon has set up a business called Urban Imaginarium, to capture the imagination of people and allow them to dream up their own built environment. “Imagination is so privatised,” Simeon says, “because other people have the money, and in their limited imagination, they’ve commissioned all these creative people and limited their creativity. We should let the creativity and the ideas lead first.”
The game is available online at climaniathegame.com
Connect with Simeon on Twitter @shtebunaev
Moving into the Doughnut
We asked Simeon to circle the areas of the Doughnut Economic framework that the Climania work fits into, and asked about the role the work is playing in this, in his own words. We’ve mapped a few of them below:
Education: “Education is very much the focal lens of empowerment. It’s at the core of what we do.”
Health: “If you work in urban planning, you can kind of make tangential link to anything.”
Housing: “Housing is just one infrastructure out of all the infrastructures that we have to deal with.”
Community: “I don’t think without collaboration, you can actually do anything. If you’re actually serious about tackling foundational issues, you probably want to build long lasting networks and self sustaining networks.”
Play: “How do you make these things cool, but actually add the substance behind them as well?”
Imagination: “We’re being restricted from imagination, and we’re being forced and primed into different imaginations.”
ewbigin Community Trust is a flexible organisation that responds to the needs and dreams of neighbours and the surrounding community.
They provide places of welcome, inclusion and social cohesion across three sites in the heart of the vibrant community of Winston Green, an inner city part of Birmingham that represents over 25 ethnicities and languages.
Most of the staff and volunteers live locally, and are passionate about seeing their neighbourhood transformed. We met up with some of the people who work there: Ola, who was involved in the youth groups; Ella, who supports with public communication and creative arts; Alex, who hosts art and creative spaces; and Paul, who hosts blacksmithing workshops and fixes things that need fixing. We sat at a table at Newbigin House, where they hold community meals and monthly community events, such as funfairs and festivals, as well as kids’ clubs and a weekly youth group.
Newbigin Trust runs lots of projects and events at Lodge Road Church Centre, Benson Community School and Newbigin House. No project is too big or small, whether that’s helping neighbours in a time of need, hosting a pop-up activity to develop skills, or hosting a sustainable project that runs for months. “That’s how Newbigin is really, things spring up,” says Ola. “Someone suggests something, and it just grows.”
Newbigin have run kids clubs, youth clubs, women and family advocacy hubs, a job club, a Persian LGBT group, trips with families and children during the holidays, introduced alpacas to the neighbours, provided social support for housing and benefits, supported people to health appointments and to navigate the healthcare system, hosted spaces for art, music, knitting, fixing and riding bikes, dancing, fishing, urban gardens, skateboarding, a foundry for blacksmithing, and a daily community cafe for a coffee or bite to eat. All of these projects have been initiated by the residents of the community, with support from Newbigin Community Trust. “Being here definitely makes you do a lot of things you thought you would never do,” says Ola. “From helping animals give birth to going canoeing. I thought I would never go on the water.”
They run frequent community events, often outdoors. Most recently they had a Creative Showcase in the Lodge Road centre, which included bands playing, choirs singing, steel pans, food, blacksmithing demonstrations, and more. “The whole place was full to the point where there was people standing outside,” says Ola. “All that you could hear was ‘this is amazing’.”
Like all community organisations, this comes with it’s fair share of challenges. “If you get funding, it’s all the bureaucracy and all the hoops you have to jump through” says Paul. Alex recalls a time before Thatcher’s era when there was a lot more funding available. “It’s very old school, what we’re doing,” he says, “I get the impression when I was younger, I saw more of this kind of thing.” Paul agrees “Crunch the numbers on what Thatcher took away… how much has it cost society in crime and all the other things? It’s all connected. It’s part of the big picture.”
Funding or lack thereof in the community directly leads to another challenge that Newbigin has. “We get people that have just come out of prison, and people that have got drinking issues,” says Alex. But like in all things, Newbigin responds to these challenges with care and creativity, and as a result, very rarely need to turn people away. “People come from difficult home situations. So they need access to where you can get some peace and safety.” The community has creative responses to a range of social issues, like knife crime in the area; transforming knives into sunflowers and works of art with
a blacksmith, or bringing in alpacas so that people can enjoy the therapeutic qualities that animals bring. “Everyone loves the alpacas,” Ola says.
What’s Next?
Newbigin plans to start working with the new secondary school in the area, and has ambitions to provide support and advocacy to men who need it. Ola has put in a bid for skateboarding space, and Alex is dreaming of using the empty space at Lodge Road Church to do creative projects and rehearsals. During lockdown, they were able to get it set up with an art section, a kitchen and a toilet. There’s still lots more work to be done!
Moving into the Doughnut
We asked Alex, Paul, Ola and Ella from Newbigin Trust to circle the areas of the Doughnut Economic framework that their work fits into, and why.
Community: “It’s like family, people care about each other.”
Food: “We do meals every day, breakfasts, coffees and tea”
Education: “We work with kids in the schools” “We ran homework clubs”
Income & Work: Job clubs, benefits advice and employment
Political Voice: Attending Council meetings
Housing: Housing advocacy and advice drop-ins
Health: Supporting people to health appointments and to navigate the healthcare system
All you could hear was
Spotlighting: Ella, Alex, Paul, Ola and Newbigin Community Trust
“Someone suggests something, and it just ”
n 1999, an elderly neighbour went to their GP just to have a chat, because they didn’t have anyone else to talk to.
And they weren’t the only one. GPs noticed that some of them had health problems that they couldn’t prescribe medication for, because they couldn’t address the core issues, like social isolation and adequate housing. So, the GPs at Karis Medical Centre reached out to local churches and asked, ‘what can we do?’
They came up with the idea to match people who had time, skills and resources, to those who had needs. “They had a real vision for what has now become known as social prescribing,” says Harry Naylor, the CEO of Karis Neighbour Scheme. They started with one part-time member of staff and a dozen volunteers in a small room behind Ladywood Community Centre, and helped people with their gardens and DIY.
Spotlighting: Harry Naylor and Karis Neighbour Scheme
Karis has been responding to the needs of people in the neighbourhood ever since. They set up a ‘Karis Be Friends’ befriending service for older people which is now supported by the Body, Mind, Spirit Partnership. In response to the growing number of refugees and asylum seekers being moved to the area, they started support and advocacy sessions, an ESOL class and a ‘Welcome to Ladywood’ dropin for people new to the area, working alongside the refugee charity Restore. They started a Baby Bank as provision for families with infants, now supported by the Ladywood Early Help team at Family Action. They run a benefits advice service with the Ladywood Community Project, their chaplains see people referred by GP’s after suffering loss, supported by the Living Well Consortium, and until recently they ran a job club in conjunction with Suited for Success.
This is just a glimpse of the work that Karis does in the neighbourhood. They provide befriending and practical support to people when they need it. For example, during the pandemic, a lot of families using the hotels on Hagley Road as emergency accommodation were there for the long term. They had nothing to cook with, so Karis stepped up by creating starter packs of pots, plates and crockery for people to be able to cook for themselves.
Karis doesn’t only support people in the community, but has a rich legacy of supporting other community organisations so that they can support each other. “We’ve got a track record of looking at what we can do beyond ourselves,” Harry says. Ladywood Sure Start was one of the pilots of the whole national programme, and it was Angie King, the first director of Karis, alongside the medical practise who helped set it up. They also ran a Community Regeneration programme and were part of the Community First funding panel. Suited for Success, which supports people to find work, is one of those that the panel found funding for. They were also able to provide Incredible Surplus with storage space when they were getting set up.
they support someone with a big thing that’s happening in their life, and sometimes it’s a small thing, but it’s all part of the rich tapestry of that person’s journey. “All sorts of things can make difference for people, their quality of life and how they feel about themselves in the future,” Harry says. He remembers bumping into someone in the street who started recounting her memories of Karis, from decorating her house when her children were young, to helping her find work through the job club, which she still loved. Karis is with people at different points of their lives, when they have different needs, and it becomes a life-long journey. “That really is part of our strength,” Harry says. Karis is there for them, for the long haul”.
However, their greatest strength can also be a weakness in the face of funding. Increasingly in the charity sector, funders want to measure the difference they are making in people’s lives, which is difficult for organisations like Karis, because they work in a relational, long-term way, where people may pop in and out when they need it. One of the ways they work around this in their Listening and Guidance project is by using the Warwick-Edinburgh Mental Wellbeing Scales (WEMWBS) to measure mental wellbeing. Harry wonders, however, whether this is the GDP model transposing into the voluntary sector and saying, ‘show me a steadily increasing line for people’, in order to justify funding.
“We had a very rocky period where we struggled quite a lot financially as an organisation,” Harry says. When a branch of funding ended, Karis went from nine members of staff to three working 30% of their hours a week, because of the sudden collapse in resource for the organisation.
During this crisis period the team, trustees and volunteers kept things going for the six months it took to find their feet again. “They recognised the value of what we do,” Harry says, “and wanted to make sure we were still here for people.”
Harry is always asking “who else in the community could work with us?” and “what can we do to grow other groups and organisations?” He knows that supporting other groups will build resilience over time, so that if Karis can’t offer support anymore, there is always a network of support for people to reach for. Part of this ethos of supporting people to support each other shows up in the van Karis has, which they use for their own needs, to be good neighbours, and also to facilitate other people being good neighbours to each other. “So if we can help Joe pass on a washing machine to Fred, that’s part of enabling that stuff to happen,” Harry says.
Another key mission of Karis is to build longterm relationships with people. Sometimes
What’s Next?
A big change that Harry can see on the horizon is the NHS integrated care system. “There’s a lot of freedom to shape it to be how local communities need or want it to be shaped,” Harry says, “there can be a part for us to play in talking to decision makers, at a time when decisions should be made closer at a community level.”
In the meantime, Karis will continue to respond to the ever changing needs of neighbours.
Moving into the Doughnut
We asked Harry from Karis Neighbourhood Scheme to circle the areas of the Doughnut Economic framework that their work fits into, and why.
Health: “We have a holistic approach to wellbeing. We inherited from the medical practice their ethos of caring for the whole person.”
Social Equity: “Things like advocacy for people, we have a welcome group for people who are new to the area.... And ESOL classes”
Networks: “Befriending and practical help are key.”
Income & Work: “We see people go through that process (with the Job Club) and go into work”
huranjeet was born and raised in Handsworth. Like many folks he grew up with, when he reached adolescence he couldn’t wait to leave.
When choosing a university, he moved as far away as possible, and that came with challenges. “The difficulties I experienced there were very much related to my sense of identity,” says Shuranjeet.
He recognised the immense sacrifice that so many before him had made in order to make the place a bit better for themselves, their neighbours and their communities. “Their work has been erased; but we are not starting from scratch,” Shuranjeet says. “I wanted my resources, my thinking and my energy to go back to where I was so lucky to be born. And slowly in that, I recognised that in Handsworth there was a legacy of radical, amazing activists, within Black and South Asian communities, and recognised that actually, this area was standing on the shoulders of giants.”
Shuranjeet believes that we have a duty to learn, and build on that legacy. “I’m very lucky to have grown up in a strong Sikh community, within which service and duty was synonymous,” he says, “and they have been at the core of my life since the very beginning.” He asks how faith-based values can inform everyday behaviour and practise, adding that “values may seem abstract at first, yet they will inform your toolbox.
While it was difficult living away from home, Shuranjeet was able to access a space which allowed him to be, unapologetically, himself. When he returned to Handsworth, he wanted to create that space for others. In October 2017, Taraki began.
The mainstream conversation around mental health was not serving or reflecting his community, “it was your Jeremy Clarksons, Russell Brands, Stephen Frys.” So at first, it was a project focusing on mental health awareness for Punjabi men. Over time, this evolved. “You can be aware of something, but it doesn’t mean you know anything about it.” He wanted to move from awareness into developing more confidence around topics, which led to a focus on education. Education was a good step, but then he wanted to apply those skills in a practical way, so he started hosting peer support spaces.
Alongside that, he wanted to generate knowledge from within the community. So, for phase one of Taraki, they developed a four-angled approach: Awareness, Education, Support and Research.
For Shuranjeet to address the underlying causes of mental health challenges, he has found that Taraki has to be strategic in creating space for people to self-organise around the redistribution of resources and opportunities. We need to design to re-distribute, and it must be just that - by design. He asks, “how can people support themselves with their strengths and support
each other with their strengths? And how can we fit this jigsaw puzzle together, within a local context?”
Taraki uses mental health as an entry point to have critical conversations that could leverage social change. “We know a lot less than we think we do,” reflects Shuranjeet. “We need to be okay with not knowing. And we need to be more confident with asking the questions and creating the space to understand. And so for me, there’s something really important there about social adaptability and not being stuck in ways that don’t serve the world around us... It’s about challenging these foundational assumptions that we might have about how things are, and then being more open to change.”
Alongside Taraki and a part-time PhD at the University of Oxford, Shuranjeet is also the lead for a mental and emotional wellbeing service at a local faith-based health care organisation. “The generational thinking (there) is unbelievable,” he says. “From a leadership perspective, they’re thinking 150 years ahead.” From his work there, he has seen that the way healthcare is commissioned and organised has changed in the last few months, in that they are trying to move towards integrated and place-based care. For example, you have people accessing counselling services, but then it transpires that actually, they need a lot of support with housing. Part of their
work right now is about “telling the people with the power that ‘look, this is happening here already. Trust us with being able to deliver this locally’.”
He also supports St. Michael’s Primary School in Handsworth, where many pupils experience a range of systemic disadvantages, and every year they have kids joining who have just moved to the UK. “It’s a school with a lot of transition, which brings challenges, but also brings a lot of amazing things as well.” Headteacher Mr Hynan has a vision, given that people were already going there everyday, that the school could be part of a community support infrastructure. They asked for an allotment, so Shuranjeet and his friends transformed the area into a usable space.
What’s Next?
For phase two, Taraki asks “how can we use the resources that we have access to here to enable communities to self-organise?” He has plans to renew their work in Awareness, Education, Support and Research, with a Media and Campaigns Hub, an Education and Training Hub, a Social Support Hub and a Research and Policy Hub. Their Social Impact Hub will be about holding space and facilitating reflection on what serves the needs of the community and beyond in a sustainable way.
Connect with Taraki via www.taraki.co.uk
Moving into the Doughnut
We asked Shuranjeet to circle the areas of the Doughnut Economic framework that their work fits into, and why.
Education: Taraki phase one has a four angled approach where it’s awareness, education, support and research.
Housing: “There’s a bit of housing work that I’ve been doing, which is to try and amplify some of the challenges that we’re experiencing locally around housing, and trying to be proactive in planning application stuff, being proactive in terms of responding to council consultations on additional licencing for HMOs, or the Supported Housing Strategy, which is out at the moment for consultation.”
Health: “we use Mental Health as an entry point for planting further seeds and leveraging social change.”
Community: “the Taraki side of things is almost like the first step into whether you want to call it community organising, whether you want to call it infrastructure building or whatever - that I’d put out into the world.”
Spotlighting: Shuranjeet Singh and Taraki
“Taraki as a word is found in Punjabi, Urdu, Hindi and it’s part of the verb
I always shout out my mom for birthing the name Taraki.”
“
”
Spotlighting: Juice Aleem and Afroflux
froflux is an interdisciplinary, futurist art-education space that explores Afro Futurism and the unseen expanse of the Black diaspora experience.
The mission is to bring into conversation “the unexplained, the unexplored,” says Juice Aleem, the founder of Afroflux, “and, what I also think, is the necessary black experience.”
Juice has been navigating the unknown by virtue of being born and growing up in England. It meant that he had a different kind of struggle compared to his Caribbeanborn parents. “It was hard as hell for them. But there’s certain things I couldn’t understand. They would tell me to do this, just do that. But I’d get in trouble.” He also had an interest in comic book superheroes, Dungeons and Dragons, and other bits of nerd culture that he felt he had to hide from his family and peers. “I felt ashamed,” Juice says. “There were some middle-aged white guys wearing Christmas jumpers and beards, the kind of people that they naturally tell us to keep away from. Those are the only people I could play with.” That’s when he realised he was looking into something different.
“Out-of-place-ness” is an inevitable condition of the diaspora, and Afroflux creates a space to not only explore that experience, and
What’s Next
Juice Aleem, true to the spaces he creates, is a multi-disciplinary artist, Hip Hop musician, speaker, co-director of B-Side Hip Hop Festival and High Vis Street Culture Festival and author of the book ‘Afrofutures and Astro Black travel: A passport to melananted futures.’ He’s currently working his second book based on his 25+ years of making and performing music and planning the next Afroflux event.
Connect with Afroflux on Instagram @afroflux_uk
Or via their website afroflux.org
connect through it, but to reach beyond it, to a feeling of belonging. When you go to an Afroflux event, it might be a screening, life drawing practise, a capoeira session, a workshop or a panel discussion. There will be music, food, and the conversation will range from latest episode in fandom, to history, health, identity, economics, mindfulness, Kemet, self defence, literature, to Pan-African spirituality, to where do we go from here, in the future.
One place where this all comes together is Fluxcon, an immersive all-day Expo where, in the words of an attendee, Blackness is however you can define it as at the door. “Fluxcon is the fluctuation of Blackness, with the space to let Blackness fluctuate.”
The idea for Fluxcon came out of a panel about Afro Futurism in a corner of Birmingham’s B-Side Hip Hop Festival at the Hippodrome in 2016. It just so happened that the event attracted a lot of comic and anime fans, including the panel itself, and questions came up around where the Black and Brown heroes and creators were at comic conventions. Afroflux already had a legacy of bringing in people that have been leading the way in their movements for years, that haven’t been getting as much recognition for their work. Fluxcon was born from that the following year, and it’s been different every time, depending on the people who show up. People weren’t just selling comics and zines, but also jewellery, oils, hair and beauty, holistic health and things like that. “That’s been the beauty of it, it’s constantly in flux.”
The dream for Fluxcon is a beautiful festival that does all the things that Afroflux is already doing. “But with heavier emphasis on the family unit,” says Juice. “And I don’t just mean dad, mom, children. I mean, these are your people. This is your family here, reading these books, these comics, these cosplayers. These DJs, these rappers, these MCs, these poets. These are your family.”
hat’s been the beauty of it, it’s constantly in flux.” “
“And it travels,” Juice continues. “It’s in London, Marseille, Kinshasa, Atlanta. It’s in Rio de Janeiro, Bogota, Colombia. And this travels to India, this travels to South East Asia,” Juice says, “we’re going to look at our connections.”
Moving into the Doughnut
We asked Juice to circle the areas of the Doughnut Economic framework that his work fits into, and asked about the role the work is playing in this, in his own words. We’ve mapped a few of them below:
Social Equity: “People are into Kemetic yoga now, but don’t talk about the cultures that they come from. There should be a cultural, holistic awareness with it. And that kind of connects with race into all the other things.”
Education: “There are people on this earth with traditions far older than ours, who treat each other with decency and respect. They live in Thailand. They live in Central Asia. They live in Central Africa. They live in the Amazon basin. And we need to speak with them.”
Community: “[Afroflux] is a family unit”
Imagination: “Where do we go from here, in the future?”
s you walk from the canal onto St. Vincent Street West, up past the willow tree, the school and the gardens, you will see, along the row of shops and planters, a rather unusual library.
You can borrow anything you need, whether that’s a sewing machine, a hair dryer, any tools, toys or books.
Sarah Lee started stewarding the Share Shack alongside The Active Wellbeing Society (TAWS) five months ago “I was blown away by the other people that were here,” Sarah says. One of the things that stood out to her was the way they would drop everything they were doing to support someone that needed their help. “They’ve got such a sense of compassion and care.”
In 2018, TAWS had a vision for a sharing library, and set up a stall at a USE-IT event to ask people what they would want. People needed connection, activity, and things to borrow. In 2020 TAWS started the pilot of the share library. Eat Make Play ran the shop and supported the community with activities and projects throughout the pandemic, and TAWS took over the shop in March 2022. They now have Share Shack pop-ups in Solihull and Nechells, and shops in Balsall Heath and Ladywood.
One of the first things that Sarah did when she arrived at the Share Shack was invite the community organisers in the neighbourhood into the space. From that meeting, they set up the Ladywood Network WhatsApp group, and it’s been a way for them to organise ever since. “I said, ‘I need shelves’. Ann Gallagher (from Incredible Edible) said, ‘I’ve got shelves, I’ll be five minutes’.” Sarah says, “I love networking!”
The Share Shack is the sharing economy in practise. As well as distributing resources amongst other community groups, and loaning items to neighbours when they need it, anyone can drop by any time and learn regenerative skills, like how to mend, repair and reuse items. The space itself is shared with members of the community that want to host activities, like sewing, boxing, running, walking and meditation. At 2pm on a Monday, a member of the community hosts Memory sessions by sharing an old item to prompt conversations around it. “It’s about people being together and having a space, knowing that they’re heard, knowing that they’re seen and that they’re valued. That changes lives.”
Sarah is looking to secure more shop spaces, big and small, in and around the neighbourhood. One way she’s planning on making this happen is through having conversations with the council about getting into empty buildings, “because what we’re doing is actually directly feeding into the strategic purposes of the council.” Another way to secure spaces for a Share Shack is through the commercial world. Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) is a self-regulating business model that helps a company be socially accountable to itself by giving medium-sized businesses tax relief if they support a charity or non-profit organisation. “Imagine a private landlord had ten shops, and let out one of them for free every year as CSR. That’d be great!”
In the meantime, Sarah would like to build partnerships with community groups and other organisations to have a Share Shack “popping up on every corner, like Blockbuster!” She dreams of creating a culture of sharing. And making sharing accessible for everyone, wherever they are, whether at the library or the leisure centre of their local school, is the first step.
What’s Next?
With colder weather approaching, Sarah plans to create packages containing items to keep families warm for the winter. The Share Shack space currently has no radiators, so they’re writing a bid to make the Share Shack a warm space that will be open to use for eight hours a day, even over the weekend, for people who need somewhere warm to come and sit. Shack Shack will also be opening a social supermarket on a pay-as-you-feel basis, and will start to use their two vans to deliver items and collect items for the community.
Moving into the Doughnut
We asked Sarah to circle the areas of the Doughnut Economic framework that the Share Shack work fits into, and asked about the role her work is playing in this, in her own words. We’ve mapped a few of them below:
Community: “When more people have more of the right people around them, they can be more empowered into better outcomes.”
Health: “If you’re part of something, yeah, your health will just be better.”
Jobs + Income: “We’re about the softer skills to feel confident and empowered.”
Energy: “We’d love people to come in and do how a ‘do we save energy’ class.”
Education: “We’re getting people ready for sport, for activity, for work, for education. We’re very much that gap.”
It’s about brings about in people.
Spotlighting: Sarah Lee and Share Shack
is a world towards liberation, in which artists are resourced and mobilised to reimagine their possibilities.
is to build capacity for collective world-building, with Black imagination and culture are the starting point.
Spotlighting: Adaya Henry, Grace Barrington and YARD
AIA is a Black-led arts and social justice organisation that Amahra Spence and Amber Caldwell co-founded in order to build vital infrastructure and resource artists in their home city of Birmingham.
YARD is that space where artists get some of their material and creative needs met. It has art materials and an open studio to create with, bedrooms to sleep in and a kitchen to share food in, as well as being a site of imagination for artists to mobilise. We met up with Community and Communication leads, Adaya and Grace, to learn more about the work they do at YARD.
YARD was born from an even bigger dream called ABUELOS: Art Hotel. The name means ‘grandparents’ in Spanish, and like everything that happens at YARD, is a celebration of heritage, joy and culture. Instead of the cultural sector’s hospitality budget being absorbed by monopolies like Premier Inn or Airbnb, the money going through ABUELOS would be contained within the city’s economy and ecology, reinvested back into MAIA, local artists, residents and mutual aid projects. “The first thing that happened when designing ABUELOS was that we got artists in to help work with architects to design that,” says Grace. YARD is always interested in transdisciplinary work, exploring what happens when different artists and practises are in proximity, and how they can inform each other, including practises that aren’t typically considered creative ones.
This year, YARD hosted Radical Imagination Labs alongside a variety of partners, where they hosted talks, workshops and an artist residency to co-design the life-affirming infrastructures required to bring MAIA’s vision of ABUELOS to life. “One of the things that YARD is really showing us is the power of proximity,” says Grace. “I think we kind of knew that when you put a group of imaginative people who are committed to having a better world in one room together, that great things would happen. But I think until you’re actually in the space witnessing that, you maybe can’t see the full depth of what becomes possible.”
As a prototype for the Arts Hotel ABUELOS, YARD aims to be a self-sustaining space that people can hire, and the money is reinvested back into community programmes. A week at YARD looks something like this: Artists’ Kitchen, a space to engage in conversation with an artist; Yard Talks, to help mobilise artists by looking at managing finances, funding, the industry in general and mutual aid; Rest and Reason, when a healer in residence offers reiki, yoga, crafts and other mindful spaces; Open House Chefsin-Residence, where anybody is welcome to share food over conversation, Game Joy, which promotes wellness and community online through gaming, as well as a way to imagine and build new worlds that you get to run and play through; and Studio 25, an open studio, where an artist produces a beat based on a prompt, for example, Bell Hooks
talking about love and conflict resolution. They’d use that recording to design ways of how to be together. Everybody free writes for bit, and then jumps on the mic. “It’s a live Cypher, in a way,” says Adaya. “Cyphers come from hip hop culture, which has been really important in the history of revolution and resistance.”
The rest of the time at YARD is mainly dedicated to private bookings, team meetings and the #FREEYARD programme, where anyone can drop in to use the space. During school holidays, YARD has times when it is closed to the public to make space for the YARD Youngers programme, where young people explore liberation topics such as disability justice and worlds without prisons through creativity. “They might not know it,” says Adaya, “but they’re really building better futures for themselves.”
What’s Next
After over a year of the #FREEYARD programme, which was their way of meeting the urgent needs of the community during the pandemic, from November 2022 MAIA will be focused on programmes that explore how we get from imagination to liberation.
Learn more about the work of MAIA Group on their most recent medium post bit.ly/maiagroupblog
Or visit their website maiagroup.co
Moving into the Doughnut
We asked Adaya and Grace to circle the areas of the Doughnut Economic framework that the work of MAIA and YARD work fits into, and asked them about the role their work is playing in this. We’ve mapped a few of them below:
Imagination: “Yard is a space that we have secured as a site of imagination for artists, and also a place where we can start to mobilise people and meet some of those material needs.”
Culture: “A lot of what we do here is rooted in Caribbean culture. Yard is obviously a nod to back a yard back home.”
Social Equity: “We’re trying to build practices and mutual aid, the basis of which is working in solidarity, not charity.”
Jobs + Income: “Asking for money is difficult for anyone but I think especially in the arts and culture sector. We’ve tried to have funding workshops and things that can help people have a framework for how to approach some of those things and get paid for their work.”
Four years ago, the USE-IT Project (Unlocking Social and Economic Innovation Together) called for local people to train as community researchers. Trainees had to research a topic they were interested in, so Alison looked into developing a wilder neighbourhood. “I was thinking of hedgehogs and foxes and badgers,” she said, but the people she spoke to said, “you start with bringing back the pollinators. And if you bring back the pollinators, everything else will follow.” They suggested that even just pockets of meadow would be enough.
Alison fell in love with the idea. She started knocking on the doors of organisations that could make it happen. But even with half the funding potentially being offered by the Council from European funding, there was no-one willing to take up the idea. Then the 2020 pandemic hit, so Alison decided to try a different approach.
Alison had lived in the neighbourhood for 25 years and had just retired from work. “I didn’t know my neighbours, and I didn’t know my local community,” Alison says. She wanted to do something for her local community, so she started small, just on her road, putting cards through people’s doors, saying, ‘Would you like some free wildflowers to brighten up our neighbourhood?’
What’s Next
Alison dreams of planting 5000m2 of wildflowers across the neighbourhood. “I count very carefully, every single packet - every single square metre. We’ve hit 3000 now!“ She wants to continue to educate children on pollination and the joy of growing in partnership with The Red Shed, City Road School and other organisations, and will continue to invite neighbours to join her. “If I can grow these, then anybody can, because I’m not a gardener,” Alison says, and then reminds us that the best time to sow wildflowers is in September/ October or between March/June.
Join Alison and The Patchwork Meadow by buying seeds and planting them: Twitter @meadowpatchwork Facebook @ThePatchworkMeadow
She was amazed to hear back from people she’d never met. She realised this could be about more than the environment, and bringing back the butterflies and bees. It was about connecting people, as well. “I met people who said they’d moved in during COVID and they knew nobody in the area. So it was the first chance for them to talk to somebody,” says Alison.
One of the first places The Patchwork Meadow planted was at St Johns and St Peters in Ladywood. “And when I saw the land, and I just thought there’s no chance anything would grow there. It was all just stones.” Alison didn’t return to the site for a few months because of lockdown, “and when I went back, I just couldn’t believe it…it’s a thrill, when a meadow comes up!”
One of the challenges they’ve come up against is the use of pesticides. They planted wildflowers in the tree wells in the streets which grew up beautifully. As well as the cost of seeds, a lot of time and effort went into planting them, so The Patchwork Meadow contacted the City Council asking them not to put pesticide down. “Two weeks later, they went out and put pesticide on all of them,” Alison says. “I know it’s just an error on the part of whoever the message didn’t get through to. But the city council should not be using pesticide, full stop.”
The Patchwork Meadow plans to work with other organisations to try to get the City Council to ban the use of pesticide, and also to encourage people to take part in No Mow May, to let the grass grow wild during
the season pollinators need wildflowers the most.
Alison is still putting invitations through doors in her local area, street by street. “We don’t make any assumptions about who might respond,” she says, because you don’t have to have a garden to plant wildflowers. They can be planted in window boxes, tree wells, anywhere to brighten up the area. ”We could all just scatter wildflower seeds and have pockets of wildflowers in as many different places as possible.” She also invites organisations, schools and faith groups to plant seeds, or to give them to their communities to brighten their areas.
Moving into the Doughnut
We asked Alison to circle the areas of the Doughnut Economic framework that her work fits into, and asked about the role her work is playing in this, in her own words. We’ve mapped a few of them below:
Climate Change: “A greener environment will impact on things like climate change, air pollution, ozone layer depletion”
Biodiversity Loss: “You start with bringing back the pollinators. Everything else will follow.”
Access to Nature: “We want people to have the joy of nature, in very close proximity, ideally on their street”
Land Conversion: “If Birmingham City Council would implement No Mow May, then that would be a huge step forward. We can play a key part in pushing that agenda.”
Chemical Pollution: “We could work with Bee Friendly Brum to get pesticides banned”.
Education: “We’re teaching children the importance of the pollinators.”
he Patchwork Meadow is on a mission to brighten up our urban neighbourhoods, and bring back the pollinators.
f I can grow these, then anybody can, because I’m not a gardener.”
“
Spotlighting: Alison Thompson and The Patchwork Meadow
.
“A chance encounter with nature is like It lifts the spirits”
Spotlighting: Kate Smith, Eat Make Play and Slow Food Birmingham
“Birmingham will be the place where they say, ’”
Eat Make Play is a social enterprise bringing neighbours together through activities and events, and Slow Food Birmingham is the local branch of a global organisation that reconnects people to where their food comes from, in order to inspire an active interest in local food cultures, traditions and production.
Slow Food Birmingham
Kate packed up her cooking school in Australia and brought it with her to Birmingham with the idea of setting up a cooking school on a barge. Somewhere along the way she got inspired by the film Sustainable, about a man returning to his home farm to regenerate the soil, and the doughnut economics framework. “It’s such a fantastic visual illustration of how to get it right, in that we can’t just look at one problem by itself.” She says, “We have farmers shopping at food banks. It’s not the food that needs to be cheaper. It’s the system that needs to be fixed.” She decided to start the Birmingham branch of Slow Food International.
The Jewellery Quarter is an area that doesn’t have a residential history, apart from people living and working above their cafes, bars and jewellery shops, so they don’t
have many independent food shops. Slow Food Birmingham runs a weekly food hub that acquires food from small producers that volunteers package for people to pick up. They don’t rely on imported food, so during lockdown they had access to great food while the supermarkets were empty. They were inundated with people.
Through the Food Hub, Kate learned that the hardest thing for small producers is getting the food into the city, because farmers don’t want to drive in traffic, and “Birmingham’s traffic is worse than anywhere else.” The solution that Slow Food is exploring is to build several distribution hubs around the city. Two and a half years later they’re still trying to sign the lease. “It’s been a big project,” Kate says, but the whole food system is all connected. “You can’t solve one bit when you’ve got other problems.”
Eat Make Play
Once a year, the Ladywood community would host a summer celebration in the reservoir playing field that they called Eat Make Play. In 2018, USE-IT resourced local people to grow creative ideas, and Sam Ewell, Ali Clawley and Kate Smith discussed how they might make Eat Make Play an everyday thing. “It’s conviviality that builds communities,” Kate says.
Eat Make Play was designed to nurture and unlock the full potential of residents in B16. The Active Wellbeing Society came to the group with funding to set up
What’s Next?
At the top of the car park in the Jewellery Quarter, a member of Slow Food Birmingham was practising his trumpeting. As he played, he noted three things about the space: the great acoustics, the fact that it was never used, and that it would make a great community garden. So now, Slow Food is working to convert a car park into an urban farm. “What we want to do is look at vertical farming, but using an organic nutrient source.”
Meanwhile, Eat Make Play are in the process of setting up another urban growing area using the verge at the Methodist Church, to plant some vegetables and create #RoomtoGrow, a space for sharing ways to nurture soil, plants and imagination.
Connect with them on Instagram
Kate @thepinkcook
Eat Make Play @eatmakeplay
Slow Food Birmingham @brumslowfood
Or via their websites slowfoodbirmingham.co.uk eatmakeplayb16.com
a sharing library for everyday items and that gave Eat Make Play use of the Share Shack shop, where anyone could borrow things they needed, or drop by to make something new, mend something old or have a go at something different. “We opened the weekend before the first restrictions for COVID. And we closed the week that everything lifted again. So it was a really difficult time,” Kate says. But what they saw by the end of those two years was how much the community responded to having a space where they could have those conversations and create.
The Potato Project
In the height of the pandemic, Eat Make Play and Slow Food joined forces to deliver “the Potato Project.” They were put in touch with a farmer whose potato harvest order had been cancelled due to COVID, and if he didn’t dig up the potatoes, he wouldn’t be able to grow his next crop. So they bought 11 tonnes of potatoes and sorted them into groups to be distributed to people who were struggling with food security, through (what would later be known as) the Food Justice Network. Group A potatoes were good enough to go straight out through the local distribution centre. Group B was chopped up and sent off to kitchens to be cooked, and the group C, the seed potatoes, were stored to regrow in the Uplands allotment. They were able to use everything that they had. “Hopefully, that’s what Eat Make Play’s reminding people all the time - that we’re stronger if we work together.”
Moving into the Doughnut
We asked Kate Smith to circle the areas of the Doughnut Economic framework that her work fits into, and asked about the role her work is playing in this, in her own words. We’ve mapped a few of them below:
Food: “Recognising our broken food system is a really good starting point for recognising everything else that our communities, and our world, has done badly.”
Climate Change: “We are really lucky to work with an amazing business called Sole of Discretion. A fishing co-op, and the methods that they use don’t dredge up the sea bottom.”
Biodiversity Loss: “Ark of Taste is the Slow Food registry of food that will be lost if we don’t use it. So it’s protection of biodiversity with plants and animals.”
Political Voice: “We’ll lobby whoever needs to be lobbied to change the food system.”
Community: “The dream is that you see that you’ve enabled the community to become more resilient.”
Energy: “We’re working on some community cooking to help reduce people’s energy bills”
Education: “Children should have access to food education that equips them to be successful adults”
ate Smith is the director of Eat Make Play and Slow Food Birmingham.
“ ’m very keen on motivating people to have a food conversation in some way”
campaign and collaborate with others to protect the reservoir as a Local Nature Reserve, and ensure that the public have a strong voice on key issues affecting the reservoir and the surrounding area. We met up with three of it’s members, Scott, Eva and Chris to find out more.
Public Engagement
“It’s very time consuming work,” says Eva, recalling all the emails and admin, chasing responses, scrutinising the detail in documents to reveal key bits of information, digging around and joining the dots. “It’s bloody exhausting,” she says. However, ERCO finds that there are moments that make it worth it. “The camaraderie is hugely satisfying when you win a point,” says Chris. “And we frequently win points.”
On a rainy, freezing cold January evening, just as the lockdown restrictions were starting to lift, ERCO invited the local community to hold a candlelit vigil for the Tower Ballroom, which was scheduled for demolition. Around sixty people arrived, singing and connecting around the reservoir, “and it was magical,” Eva says.
Scott also acknowledges that there are “lots of fantastic people” working at the council who are doing the best they can with all the tensions and contradictions they have to work within, “but there are also structural and accountancy problems,” he adds. An example cited is the value of trees. Barnet London Borough Council have been the first council in the UK to acknowledge the full value of a tree as an asset to socio-economic and environmental health. “We do the opposite,” says Scott. “We place them as either zero on the on the Council’s balance sheet, or as a negative.”
There are a lot of people who live in transient accommodation around the reservoir, and the environment means a lot to them. “There is something which is more than intangible that people get out of being in that green and blue space,” says Eva. “It’s enriching for the soul to visit the reservoir.”
The Alternative Plan
In July 2019, the Birmingham City Council gave a vision for the reservoir that Scott, Eva and Chris felt would be detrimental to local people and the natural wildlife. The Tower Ballroom was going to be replaced with housing, so Scott and Eva went to the Council meeting as members of the public “asking to be heard”. They were told that the Council already had the best plan they needed for the reservoir, and they didn’t need to change it, “and we were all incensed,” says Eva. They wanted to produce an alternative plan, and the Council leader gave them a week to do it. So, the community came together to create the document ‘Edgbaston Reservoir: A Community-Led Vision.’
The alternative plan outlined a vision that would allow the reservoir to be an example of ‘ecological pioneering’ and ‘civic innovation’, that would be able to evolve over time in line with people’s needs and become a world-class destination for others to visit, to see how a city can address pressing environmental issues. In response, the North Edgbaston Councillor Sharon Thompson arranged meetings with the Birmingham Council Leader, Ian Ward. A consortium of all the stakeholders was formed. However, Scott, Eva, Chris and others felt that the voices representing the individual reservoir users were not being heard alongside the needs of already established organisations representing water sports groups.
“The City Council have got their Communication department, their Officers, their Legal team,” says Scott, “so we had to find a way of making the community voice heard that would be equally as powerful.” ERCO came together around the need for a structure with a formal presence that would enable them to get funding and have an equal say.
ERCO have organised other public gatherings and pop-ups along the reservoir, to inform and engage users in the conversation. In that time, they’ve noted a palpable feeling of solidarity against the Council’s intentions of building privately owned housing on the site of the Tower Ballroom. “There is a really significant and blatant disregard for the view of the vast majority of reservoir users,” says Scott. “The council hasn’t yet learned to modernise their approach; to meaningfully engage and co-design a plan with reservoir users from the outset. This is in spite of several of their previous masterplans being stopped due to public uproar.”
What’s Next?
The Edgbaston Reservoir Collaborative await news of the Council’s Master Plan, and will continue to generate support for the reservoir by hosting inviting spaces for people to engage with.
You can connect with the Edgbaston Reservoir Collaborative via www.edgbastonreservoir.co
Moving into the Doughnut
Health: “If you put it in medical terms, it also speaks to the body’s own pharmacy. It increases the happy hormones, strengthens one’s immune system, and gets rid of toxic cortisol.”
“Studies show that if you’ve got water, a green environment and wildlife, you’ve got the perfect trio for sustaining mental health.”
Housing: “We’re not anti housing at all. But we are housing in the right place, and we are housing for people. We don’t need luxury apartments.”
Political voice: “We’re making sure we are engaging more with reservoir users so we can grow and become a stronger voice”
Access to Nature: It’s enriching for the soul to visit the reservoir.”
he Edgbaston Reservoir Collaborative (ERCO)
Spotlighting: Scott Hewer, Eva Bennet, Chris Vaughan and Edgbaston Reservoir Collaborative (ERCO)
Spotlighting: Emma Thompson and the Birmingham & Black Country Wildlife Trust
entre of the Earth is the Birmingham and Black Country Wildlife Trust’s purpose built environmental education centre in Winson Green.
The Centre enables local communities to learn about and connect with nature, as part of their plan for a wilder Birmingham and Black Country. “It’s about people, and people being connected to wildlife,” says Emma Thompson, Head of Fundraising and Communications. We interviewed Emma at the centre to find out more about their work, with a human adultsized otter mascot on the desk called Sir David Otterborough, “an absolute legend”.
Building Centre of the Earth
In the 1980’s, passionate people fought to save a really important local green space in Moseley from a housing development, and they won. The Save Our Bog campaign was about recognising that wildlife wasn’t limited to the countryside, but that it was part of our urban landscapes, too. hat action by teachers, planners, landscape architects and local naturalists, including Joy Fifer who in her own words was ‘just a housewife’, spurred the development of the Urban Wildlife Group which later became the first Urban Wildlife Trust in the UK.
In the 1990’s Birmingham and Black Country Wildlife Trust, along with volunteers and local members of the community took a derelict site in Winson Green and transformed it from a scrap yard to an environmental education centre. The work took four years of landscaping, building and rewilding. The project brought together many members of the community, including local children who designed the indoor classroom. The finished project is a beautiful site decorated with mosaics and murals, an amphitheatre and a wildlife pond, as well as the eco-building itself, with walls insulated with compacted paper and telephone directories and a unique timber framed structure to demonstrate the sustainable use of natural resources.
and get up and down the canal and do a bit of an Urban Wildlife Safari and collect litter,” says Emma.
The Trust’s biggest threats come from housing developments disrupting natural habitats and the cost of living crisis affecting donations, memberships and funding. Happily, they have thousands of passionate supporters that are ready to get involved, campaign and donate, and a growing young audience that want to take more action. “How to write to your MP, how to petition against something, how to take action on the ground, how to inspire your neighbours to create wildlife friendly gardens, that’s what we’re going to be focusing on,” says Emma. In response to these new activities they’re planning to recruit a Youth Action for Nature manager that will be working a lot with schools and community groups in the neighbourhood.
What’s Next?
Birmingham and Black Country Wildlife Trust’s Strategy for 2030 includes three goals; a) have nature in recovery and b) people taking action while c) using natural solutions. In response to the government making big changes to legislation to the detriment of nature, including allowing fracking to go ahead, they have an upcoming live #DefendNature campaign asking people to write to their MPs. To aid with biodiversity, they also invite people to take part in Citizen Science projects, submitting records of local wildlife through the free iNaturalist app to Eco Record, the Local Environmental Records Centre.
Birmingham and Black Country Wildlife Trust needs more members and dedicated volunteers. To sign up as a member go to bbcwildlife.org.uk/ JoinUs or follow them on social media.
Moving into the Doughnut
We asked Emma to circle the areas of the Doughnut Economic framework that the work fits into, and asked about the role her work plays in this, in her own words. We’ve mapped a few of them below:
Access to Nature: “Our work is invaluable in that sense, because it’s providing access to green spaces for children.”
Community: “There’s pictures of the local community actually coming and helping out with spades and digging and planting the trees and it’s remained a local site for local people.”
Climate Change: “We’re working on natural solutions, like river restoration projects, we are doing things like mitigating flood risk”
Biodiversity Loss: “We’re working to increase biodiversity.”
Today the centre focuses on what wildlife can do for the wellbeing of people, and what people can do for wildlife. “We all saw that through COVID, everybody wanted to go to green spaces,” says Emma, “and everyone realised they wanted to to start spending time in the garden.” Work at Centre of the Earth includes increasing biodiversity by propagating plants and growing the seeds of local woodland flora like Stitchwort, Primrose and Gold Saxifrage. The Trust aim to teach people about wildlife and sustainable development though hosting open days, training courses, volunteer days, school visits and Wild Experience Days. They also offer groups a trip on a punt made of recycled plastics called the Poly Roger, “the Skipper Jane will take them out
Land Conversion: “We’re objecting to planning proposals and landscaping projects”
Nitrogen & Phosphorus Loading: “We’ve been doing some projects around the motorways and rivers and runoffs.”
Social Equity: “We’re working to redress the inequalities that people have in accessing nature”
Absolute Legend
is for Activism is a group that allows people to see what a combination of Marxist theory and practice can result in, and the vision it allows us to see and live.
What started off as a book club has evolved to meet the needs of their community.
Sham was born in Baghdad and came to the UK as an asylum seeker the year after the Iraq war at the age of 10. Sham saw imperialism and US aggression firsthand, and that experience has been hugely influential in her life. She left university feeling disgruntled about the education system, and the lack of Marxist thinkers especially. To fill that gap, she set herself a book challenge to read one book a week.
Her friend and co-founder suggested she start a book club, and A is for Activism emerged as a Marxist reading group. Sham put a call out on social media to see if anyone would be interested, and they started meeting in Tim Hortons. They soon outgrew that space, with nearly 20 people attending, and when the pandemic hit, and they made the switch to meeting online.
Now they have people from all over the world engaging in radical texts, as well as more people that believe and donate to the vision. However, Sham was feeling restless. “I don’t want to be one of these Marxists that just engages in critical theory alone. That’s not enough.”
Sham reached out to Brushstrokes, an organisation that supports vulnerable people and newcomers to the UK, and asked them what they needed. “I wanted to figure out what we could do with my organisation that would give the extra help without it being purposeless.”
From that, A is for Activism started to pay a Kurdish Barber to go into SIFA fireside and give haircuts to their clients who were homeless, and started arranging self defence classes for women and nonbinary people. They also do annual school packs for migrant children. “I came to the UK as an asylum seeker, so I remember how expensive school uniform and school equipment could be. If there was anything that allowed us to alleviate some of that, I wanted to make sure that we could do it.” Of course, the school packs came complete with age appropriate revolutionary books, such as Muhammad Ali, Rosa Parks, Mandela, Frida Kahlo, Martin Luther King, and the Teenagers Guide to Changing the World.
“I think in the age of social media, it’s really, really easy to lose our minds. And it’s really easy to just allow ourselves to be dumbed down. Which is why, no matter how great the community work that AIFA does is, what is pivotal for us is understanding why critical theory is so important, and correctly tackling the system that we have now.”
A is for Activism choose which books to read, and when, based on the upcoming birthdays and anniversaries of Revolutionaries that they want to learn about, the majority of which are by Marxists and Leninists. “It’s just about bridging that gap,” Sham says. “Even academia just forces us to engage with texts that aren’t really good for us, and don’t critique the current systems that we have in the way they need to be critiqued.” The reading group is designed to be accessible for non-readers, and many of the books they choose are available as PDFs and audiobooks on YouTube. “They’re books that have been around, in the black radical tradition in particular, for decades.”
Sham had her beliefs affirmed in her recent trip to Cuba, where she saw first hand what socialism could mean for the liberation of imagination and minds. “This is the really awful thing about capitalism. It stifles your creativity so much. It tries to pretend it’s innovative and that it will help you, but it stifles us so much that we can’t dare to dream and envision these things. Whereas in Cuba … literally everyone’s an artist. “It made me even more assertive in my beliefs and my dream of full revolution and the dismantlement of capitalism in our lifetimes.”
What’s Next?
Sham aims to get funding to work on A is for Activism full-time in collaboration with others, and plans to knit a stronger community through hosting monthly hang outs with refugees and other organisations. They continue to welcome new members to the club.
Connect with A is for Activism on their website aisforactivism.com or on Twitter @aisforactivism Instagram @aisfor.activism
Moving into the Doughnut
We asked Sham to circle the areas of the Doughnut Economic framework that her work fits into, and asked about the role her work plays in this, in her own words. We’ve mapped a few of them below:
Political Voice:
“People who were previously feeling disenfranchised have felt they’ve been able to now explain better how they felt with the text that they’ve engaged in.”
Equality: “All of this can only happen when we dream of like the end the complete dismantlement of capitalism.”
Peace & Justice: “People can work with their communities with us”
Spotlighting: Sham Murad and A is for Activism
“It made me even more assertive in my beliefs and my dream of and the dismantlement of capitalism in our lifetimes.”
Spotlighting: Ernie Holmes, Chris Vaughan and Warm Earth
arm Earth is a community gardening project nurturing the wellbeing of people and soil in their neighbourhood.
They invite neighbours to grow flowers and vegetables and model the regenerative economy by creating and selling compost recycled from the food waste of local schools. We met up with Ernie Holmes and Chris Vaughan at their growing site in Winston Green.
The project started off as a gardening group. The Summerfield Residents Association joined a RHS (Royal Horticultural Society) community-building exercise called “Your Neighbourhood In Bloom.” One day, Chris visited a nearby grow site, formerly garages. He noticed the way it brought the community out together. “I suddenly realised that it’s best to play to people’s interests,” Chris says. “And gardening is a big interest.”
At first they used a space at the side of a community hall on Cavendish road, which was owned by the local church, and created raised beds there. Then Ann Gallagher of Incredible Surplus told them about some available greenhouses at City Hospital, and they moved. When the USE-IT scheme resourced local people to grow their ideas in 2018, the gardening group was encouraged to become a Community Benefit Society, and was renamed ‘Warm Earth’.
The journey had gone from gardening with the community to creating compost “by way of things to do”, says Ernie. Chris adds: “we thought ‘Warm Earth’, because Ernie had clicked on to this composting idea where compost generates heat.” They planned to use organic waste to create heat that would keep the raised beds active and growing for part of the winter. Warm Earth received a grant of £3000 from the Institute of Social Enterprise to develop the project with support from Birmingham City University’s STEAMhouse.
In line with the regenerative ethos, Ernie and Chris decided that Warm Earth would be self sufficient. Ernie comes from a business background and thought of two income streams: selling the compost and selling the Warm Earth technology. With regular income they’d be able to employ local people, and Warm Earth and the circular economy surrounding it would thrive.
At the greenhouses, the gardening and plant sales were doing really well, but they weren’t doing as much communal growing as they’d hoped, because the City Hospital was a bit too far away from their particular community.
The land that Warm Earth were using was planned to be used for housing, so they had to find another site. The reservoir playing field was being developed by Birmingham Settlement, so they couldn’t go there. Then Birmingham and Black Country Wildlife Trust, who run the Centre of the Earth,
pointed them to a field just around the corner from them, which only had a few alpacas occupying the space. Chris got in touch with the Birmingham Open Spaces Forum and was able to organise a grant of £10,000 with support from Get Grants, so that they could move Warm Earth and their beds to the new site.
They were continuing to work on their “Warm Earth” technology when they attended a talk at the STEAM House about chip technology. They wanted to incorporate that to trigger when it’s time to put water onto the soil, and when it’s right to warm it up. They knew then that they needed certain technical ability to install sensors into it. “And lo and behold,” says Ernie, “we had Victor appear.” The University have a bio-science department and are always looking for new schemes that use organic material. Chris told them about the Warm Earth project and they sent over Victor, the technician, to help as a volunteer.
Warm Earth partner with many other community organisations in the neighbourhood, and most recently will be working with the REACH OUT co-ordinator to work with young offenders. They also work closely with Foundry School, the Pantry scheme, and the Newbigin Community Trust, to organise joint community events on the field. Last year they had 500 people on the field to celebrate Diwali and Bonfire Night, and this year will see another community celebration.
What’s Next?
Warm Earth has a few plans for the site, which they are naming “Foundry Field”; capturing rain-water more effectively, building a willow dome with Stuart Unwin, working more with people with learning difficulties and carrying out the plan to make and sell compost in partnership with the local school.
Connect with Warm Earth on: Facebook @warmearthbrum and Instagram @warmearthbrum
Jobs + Income: “Our goal is to find meaningful, paid work for people to do.”
Climate Change: “We use peat free compost and reduce our carbon output by using woodchips.”
Chemical Pollution: “We don’t use chemicals here, except when we have to.”
Land Conversion: “We’re putting gardens back into use.”
Biodiversity Loss: “You can’t just grow vegetables solely, you’ve got to mix them with flowers, it’s to do with the pollination.”
Freshwater withdrawals: “We harvest rainwater”
Nitrogen & Phosphorus Loading: “We’re going to show people that by putting the leaves of comfrey into a pot and letting it drain down, they can get all the nutrition they need for their plants.
Education: “We like to teach people what we know and share with other people what they know. Particularly with gardening.”
Food: “We grow vegetables and fresh food.”
Health: “Mental wellbeing comes into health, and we’re providing people with meaningful things to do.”
Moving into the Doughnut
ohn Christophers is the architect behind the UK’s first zero carbon house. A flagship example of retrofitting a Victorian house.
He is one of the driving forces behind Retrofit Balsall Heath, a social movement to transform the energy efficiency and aesthetic of the built environment in his hometown.
The house is performing better than zero carbon, and John has been hosting open days at his home in Balsall Heath to start conversations about how to retrofit homes across the UK at a community-led level. This feels particularly urgent within the context of the energy, health and climate crisis and colder weather around the corner. “We’ve got a once in a generation chance to get this right,” John says.
Currently, retrofit funding is designed to address one thing at a time, for example, to replace the windows in one privately owned house, when what we really need is to bring energy use right down by fully insulating the walls, roofs, floors, windows and doors, and get the remaining energy needed from renewables and heat pumps. “If we only put in half the insulation, we’ve still got all the disruption, all the overhead costs. We must go the whole way.”
Community-led
When it comes to retrofit every detail matters. A housing development for 450 homes had received planning permission on the basis that they put heat pumps into the development, but they planned to put in gas boilers instead. The news came as a letter through the door with a variation of the planning condition application. Most people would probably just put the letter straight in the bin, but someone picked it up. They worked out that in fact, if the development went ahead, and they changed the heat pumps to gas boilers, then there would be 2 million extra kgs of poisonous nitrous oxide as well as CO2 emission “in the middle of a very dense urban area,”
Lots of people, once this was explained to them, wrote letters of objection. “And I’m really pleased to say that in the end, the planners didn’t even have to refuse the application… the developers withdrew it”. The power of winning a campaign like that, locally, has just been fantastic in terms of people understanding what the issues are, and feeling that we the people can do something.”
A key thing for a large-scale retrofit project is that it cannot be top-down, with a bit of community involvement. It must be community led. There’s a precedent for this in Housing Action Trusts, an urban regeneration model that was used in Castle Vale, which brought together local residents and legal, finance and design professionals. Decisions were made by the community, and then supported by that process.
John is also inspired by models like People Powered Retrofit in Manchester, which pairs residents with trades people who’ve got skills to retrofit their homes. He sees opportunity for new jobs and skills in this movement, if we can create the infrastructure to train people. What John would really love to do, is to upskill experts who have lived in the area for twenty years, and get them accredited to do the work and affiliated to other organisations that the Council would be willing to contract.
The Role of Creativity
Arts has an integral part to play to explain, interpret and celebrate what needs to be done within the community.
At the Balsall Heath carnival, Retrofit Balsall Heath hosted a theatre performance to demonstrate retrofit. Actors in builders hats went through the motions of reimagining a Wendy house, by lifting the roof, putting the insulation in the walls, fitting a few triple glazed windows and a heat pump. “There was a lot of fun and laughs in bringing that together,” John says.
During the Retrofit Reimagined festival collaboration with CIVIC SQUARE, the Architects Climate Action Network, Dark Matter Labs and a host of great systemic thinkers from around the country inspired the imaginations of the community and more local people visited the house and got involved, including two local city councillors. “That was that was a lovely stepping stone.”
What’s Next?
Retrofit Balsall Heath has three main focuses. One focus is taking the funding they’ve got to start retrofitting 700 homes in Balsall Heath, to get positive stories that people can aspire to. The second focus is to document the entire retrofit journey of a few homes in Balsall Heath from the very beginning, from when residents ask questions like ‘what is retrofit? and ‘why do I need to rip my beautiful home apart?’ Right through to documenting the work being done on their home. They want people to understand why retrofit is transformational in terms of fuel bills, climate and health, and to start having serious conversations about how they can get started.
The third focus is to have this work be community-led. “We’ve got social infrastructure on this going back decades in this area,” says John. Within the context of Retrofit Balsall Heath, street champions could lead on other aspects of the built environment, like food, biodiversity or transport. John recalls a project called Balsall Heath jungle, which invited people to have a fruit tree in every garden, or another project about gathering and sharing recipes and food from the diverse range of cultures that live there. “Identity and food is something that could really bring people together.”
Connect with Retrofit Balsall Heath on Twitter @RetrofitBH
Moving into the Doughnut
We asked John to circle the areas of the Doughnut Economic framework that the Retrofit Balsall Heath work fits into, and asked about the role the work is playing in this, in their own words. We’ve mapped a few of them below:
Climate change: “Buildings are responsible for 49% of CO2 in the UK. Just running our houses alone will overshoot the planetary boundary for the whole of the UK.”
Energy: “If the house isn’t insulated, then we’re having to pay enormous bills to heat not just the house, but the whole neighbourhood”
Housing: “This is all about housing. And this ripples out to everything.”
Jobs & Income: “I think it’s a huge opportunity for jobs and skills. And the skills aren’t there at the moment, but we can train people up”
Water: “We have a rainwater tank in the cellar of the old house. We reclaim 80% of the water. It goes into the washing machine, toilet, to wash vegetables, things like that.”
Political Voice: “if retrofit is done in the wrong way that people haven’t got a say as to what’s being done, their political voice is stifled”
Spotlighting: John Christophers and Retrofit Balsall Health
We’ve got a once in a generation chance “
”
Spotlighting: Ann Gallagher and Incredible Surplus is the aim.”
“
ncredible Surplus collects surplus food and other materials that would otherwise go to waste, and redistributes them to individuals and community organisations on a “pay-as-you-feel” basis. We met up with Ann Gallagher, the co-director.
Incredible Surplus, previously known as The Real Junk Food Project Birmingham, began in 2014 as a creative response to the surplus produce that would otherwise be thrown away by supermarkets, restaurants and hospitality industries across the West Midlands. They aim to empower and engage people in sharing, growing and making the most of the resources within the community.
They initially ran out of Ladywood Community Centre and had a food boutique and a cafe that served cooked meals from surplus food collected. Early on in the project they provided “Freegan” box deliveries with a £1 delivery charge, when this became unsustainable they continued on a collection basis. During the Covid-19 pandemic they played a big part in the #BrumTogether coalition of voluntary community and faith groups, delivering essential supplies and support where it was needed. Unfortunately the cafes closed over this period. You can currently find Incredible Surplus at their main distribution centre, the “Sharehouse” in Winson Green. They have four other sites
where they give out food bags, and a weekly “boutique” at Christchurch Summerfield coffee morning.
The majority of the activity that Incredible Surplus does focuses on decreasing food waste, but also in changing the mindset of people around waste. They grow their own vegetables at their allotments, where they encourage composting through their ‘Compost Culture’ project, collecting food waste, woodchips and anything that can be composted. “I think we should have allotments in every single park. So it normalises growing food,” says Ann.
The food doesn’t come for free, because food is valuable, but it can be bought on a pay-as-you-feel basis. “Everybody is requested to give something, whether time, money or skill to us, or to someone else, now or in the future. And the idea behind that is to engage with people around participation and purpose. Everyone has value, everyone can do something.” Incredible Surplus is the gift economy in practice, and they find that about a quarter of the people that collect food pay in money. This tends to cover the costs for those who can’t afford to give cash and are paying in kind. In this way they are self-sustaining.
Incredible Surplus works with a wide network of groups across the city, collecting and distributing not just food but everyday and household items. The time donated keeps the project running. “I’m the
mouthpiece, but I don’t do most of the work. The work is done by hundreds of people.”
One of the biggest challenges Ann faces is how to bring out the best in the team of volunteers donating their time. She has as few rules as possible so that people don’t feel overwhelmed by them, and tries to be clear with signage and guidelines, particularly around safety. She is also careful about giving people jobs that best suit their skills. “You get to know their story, you get to know where they’ve been or what they’ve done and what they might like to do. So that’s what it’s about. It is about growth.” Ann explains that often volunteers have their own needs and challenges, and are able to find company, support and purpose in the work. Ann has been living with cancer for fifteen years, “I could sit at home and cry all day. But I really don’t want to it’s boring as hell.” She believes that whatever the situation, “you can do something somewhere and you will be benefiting from it.”
Moving into the Doughnut
We asked Ann to circle the areas of the Doughnut Economic framework that Incredible Surplus work fits into, and asked about the role the work is playing in this, in their own words. We’ve mapped a few of them below:
Food: “We collect surplus, we check it, we distribute food to people or to animals, or to people who are cooking meals, and then we compost. And then we grow food.”
Health: “We help people’s health because of what the way we’re working”
Housing: “We get lots of people from supported housing coming here.”
What’s Next?
“Zero waste is the aim,” Ann says, so they’re constantly thinking about how to make the most of the resources they have, from finding alternatives to plastics, to building on their existing relationships. Ann believes that when people gather it gives space for opportunities to emerge, and that often people will be able to find solutions to their problems together. “You’ve got to provide opportunities for people,” so she’s looking to partner up with organisations like FoodCycle to host communal dining spaces, where people can bring the food they want to share.
Connect with Incredible Surplus via their website incrediblesurplus.org
Political voice: “I love when people get the confidence to challenge you. I mean, really, what we want to do is empower people.”
Biodiversity loss: “We have three triple allotments and two singles, and we’re still looking for land.”
Peace and justice: “We work with asylum seekers and refugees, particularly with organisations like Brushstrokes.”
Jobs and Income: “There’s different ways of looking at income…we pay people in food and toilet rolls.”
Air Pollution: “We have electric vehicles…and we cut down miles.
You can join neighbours in gardening, running and other wellbeing activities, or host a community event, like so many over the last few years, including Eat Make Play, Cultures in Common or the Regenerative Neighbourhoods Festival.
You’ve arrived at a playing field stewarded by Birmingham Settlement, an organisation committed to wellness and the long term resilience of people and the natural environment. This includes financial resilience through money advice, training, and learning about personal and ecological environmental awareness. “Our business is providing spaces and activities and services that people can benefit from,” says Martin Holcombe, the CEO of Settlement. “In the Venn diagram of purpose between Birmingham Settlement and Axis Design, wellbeing is the bit that overlaps,” says Rob Annable of Axis Design, the architect of the Red Shed. We met up with both of them at the site to learn more about their work.
Founding Story of Birmingham Settlement
In 19th century Birmingham, the ‘city of a thousand trades’, riding the prosperity of the metal industries, saw railways arrive, MPs elected, and mass immigration following the Great Irish Famine. Birmingham rapidly became the second largest population in Britain, and with that came thousands of back-to-back, poorly built, badly drained and overcrowded houses.
Outraged by these living conditions, in 1899, the social reformist activist wives of some of the lecturers at the University of Birmingham, along with the Cadburys, started a settlement for women and children, which was later opened up to everybody. In 1923, landowner Joseph Gillott passed on 3.45 acres of land to be preserved for community use, of which Birmingham Settlement eventually became sole trustee.
Selwyn Road Playing Field
Flash forward to 2016, residents were complaining about the state of Selwyn road playing field. “I’d come to various meetings at the Memorial Hall,” says Martin. “We were asking people what they would like to see happen on the field.” In May 2018, Martin hosted a pop up picnic that saw around 400 people. Another event was hosted by ArtScoop, “we saw nine or ten organisations working on that one at the time,” Marin says. “We had about 900 people come to that one.”
Work began on the playing field in August 2020. From submission of the planning application to handing over the keys, with a global pandemic and Brexit in between, the whole process took under 2 years.
Building the Red Shed
Martin first met Rob as he was designing a cafe in Cotteridge Park. This turned out to be the perfect match. Rob’s practice is committed to making exciting, enjoyable pieces of architecture that accentuate the activities that people want to do. “We are mindful of, and engage with, the broader political and economic issues in the neighbourhood and within the city,” Rob says. In the past, Rob’s practice has primarily worked with local authorities and housing associations on social housing, which meant that he was often connected to community groups, and involved in a lot of consultations, public meetings and regeneration discussions.
There is also a good overlap between Rob’s history in community-facing roles, alongside the more technical requirements for architecture within the context of the climate crisis and the need for energy-saving. “Those two things increasingly come together to help me offer support and assistance to groups who care more about their projects than maybe a traditional private developer might.”
The Red Shed boasts energy-saving triple glazing, with thick walls made of a clay block
that uses recycled newspaper as insulation and a ground-source heat pump. It uses low carbon materials around some of the timber sheathing and cladding, and clay based plaster.
Challenges to building the Red Shed
Funders didn’t always understand their financial process Martin tell us: “from their perspective, they were thinking it’s really vague. But it wasn’t vague.” In the end, Settlement was largely able to use their own reserves for the project, only putting in for one grant from Veolia. “Settlement are an unusual client,” Rob says, “because they had some capital resources to be able to invest in a project, and many other people in the sector don’t have that. They rely on a third party and end up having to just follow whatever paperwork and procedures that third party brings to the table, which can be a layer of bureaucracy and challenge.” As well as funding reserves, Settlement’s “open book” contract management process enabled them to use materials that best suited the environment they were working in, and to adapt as necessary during the development.
What’s Next?
In the next phase, plans include bicycle storage, PV solar panels on the roof, a wider growing area, an outdoor amphitheatre, a biodome, an above-ground water system that will gather water in a pond area that will become a haven for local wildlife, and a telescope.
Moving into the Doughnut
We asked Martin and Rob to circle the areas of the Doughnut Economic framework that the Birmingham Settlement work fits into, and asked about the role the work is playing in this, in their own words. We’ve mapped a few of them below:
Jobs + Income: “We do employment work. We’re OCN accredited now and we’re developing courses. Our money advice service is the single biggest area of our work.”
Chemical Pollution: “We’ve sought to reduce our oil based material choices”
Fertiliser Use: Nitrogen Agroforestry plans will generate healthier soil and reduce synthetic fertiliser use.
Air Pollution: Electric car chargers to move away from fossil-fuel motor dependence.
Freshwater Withdrawals: Plans for rainwater capture.
ucked away between a curtain of trees along Edgbaston Reservoir and Selwyn Road is a lush green playing field and a bright red shed...
Spotlighting: Martin Holcome, Rob Annable and Birmingham Settlement
Pictured is a version of the Discovery Canvas that we used in conversation with the people we have spotlighted. You can share this canvas with others, or use this edition to host your own spotlighting conversations. We welcome iterations of this canvas and would love to see them.
If you’d like to learn more about how to use this canvas to uncover doughnut dreams and stories in your neighbourhood, arrange a tea and chat with Charlotte or Nettes from the CIVIC SQUARE team. We will also be sharing this canvas and interview guide on the DEAL platform: doughnuteconomics.org
e are always looking to work as openly as possible, sharing tools and methodologies as often as we can.
hen we asked the neighbourhood to map the work that is helping us to thrive, we had nearly a hundred different people, places, projects and organisations that we could spotlight.
And when we asked those we spotlighted for recommendations, we probably had a hundred more people that we would want to have this conversation with. We will probably never get around to everyone, but we welcome suggestions of who we should be spotlighting in the Good News of B16 at bit.ly/goodnewsofb16
With Gratitude
“While creating an alternative to destructive economic structures is imperative, it is not enough. It is not just changes in policies that we need, but also changes to the heart. Scarcity and plenty are as much qualities of the mind and spirit as they are of the economy. Gratitude plants the seed for abundance.”
—Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass
We are thankful for those that came before us, and for those that will follow after. We would like to acknowledge the work that has inspired this project:
The Voices of Ladywood newspaper was run by Karis Neighbour Scheme, and covered moments like the Pope coming to Ladywood, the Queen’s Jubilee and plans for an Icknield Port Loop Development.
Green Shoots of a New Economy at the neighbourhood scale
We are hugely thankful for the time taken to have these conversations, as well as the care, creativity and commitment that those spotlighted bring into the work they do, bringing us into an economy of transformation, mutual aid, sharing, and imagination right now. We invite you to connect with them and support their work.
Sham Murad - A is for Activism www.aisforactivism.com
Ann Gallagher - Incredible Surplus incrediblesurplus.org
Adaya Henry and Grace BarringtonYARD/Maia Group www.maiagroup.co
The work that we chose to spotlight in this first edition was based on a few factors: stories of every day action from every day people, people that have been doing the work for decades, work that has a strong local focus, projects that create space for dreaming of the future, people that have a deep insight into the neighbourhood, and people who have supported the work at CIVIC SQUARE over the last three years and beyond. We also wanted those spotlighted to represent the Four Lenses of the doughnut framework: Local-Social, Global-Social, Local-Ecological and Global-Ecological.
As our work is neighbourhood-orientated we wanted to prioritise work happening in the B16 postcode, but we also acknowledge that everything is connected and that all flourishing is mutual, so it made sense to include the people doing amazing work in the wider city area.
We look forward to the next edition, where we hope to spotlight the wonderful work of Ladywood Community Project, We Go Outside Too, The Deaf Culture Centre, Youth Climate Strike, Bearwood Action for Refugees, Suited for Success, T.E Convenience on St. Vincent Street West, and many more.
The Daily Alternative is a newsletter by Alternative UK, sharing every day, new evidence of a regenerative future arising.
Stories for Life reminds us to move from stories of separation to stories of connection.
From What is to What if by Rob Hopkins, invites us to reimagine the future we want to live in.
The West Indian Gazette and Afro-Caribbean News was Britain’s first major Black newspaper which was antiimperialist in orientation, pan-Africanist in politics, feminist in its leadership and documented the various an anti-colonial struggles around the world during the key period of the 1950s.
Street Detectorism from CoLab Dudley is a method of neighbourhood data mapping that seeks to build stronger connections to its
Harry Naylor - Karis Neighbour Scheme karisneighbourscheme.org
Juice Aleem - Afroflux afroflux.org
Iris Bertz - Bertz Associates www.bertzassociates.net
Martin Holcombe - Birmingham Settlement www.birminghamsettlement.org.uk
Rob Annable - Axis Design Architects axisdesignarchitects.com
John Christophers - Retrofit Balsall Heath zerocarbonhousebirmingham.org.uk
Simeon Shtebunaev- Climania climaniathegame.com
Scott Hewer, Eva Bennett and Chris Vaughan (ERCO) - Edgbaston Reservoir Collaborative edgbastonreservoir.co
Carol Booth-Davis and Chris Vaughan Friends of Edgbaston Reservoir
place.
facebook.com/friendsofedgbastonreservoir
Kate Smith - Eat Make Play / Slow Food Birmingham eatmakeplayb16.com slowfoodbirmingham.co.uk
Ola, Ella, Alex and Paul - Newbigin Community Trust newbigintrust.uk
Sarah Lee - TAWS/Share Shack
theaws.co.uk/active-communities/shareshacks/ladywood-share-shack
Shuranjeet Singh - Taraki www.taraki.co.uk
Alison Thompson - The Patchwork Meadow www.facebook.com/ThePatchworkMeadow
Ernie Holmes and Chris Vaughan - Warm Earth warmearth.co.uk
Emma Thompson - Birmingham and Black Country Wildlife Trust www.bbcwildlife.org.uk
“The world needs a new breed of economist-slash-storyteller, armed with the fundamentals of economics and a million creative ways to tell an impactful and lasting narrative...
A new economics starts with a new narrative, and you are a key protagonist in the story.”
— Beautiful Economics
Be a Good News Reporter
“Each of us has a role to play in our own truth-making and a responsibility to work with others to understand the bigger picture.” — Indra Adnan, Politics of Waking Up
Storytellers play a vital role in the neighbourhood. It’s our job to listen, observe, ask good questions, find stories and delve deeper to uncover the possibility of bold dreams for the future and help connect them across the communities we are part of. Anyone can be a reporter, everyone has something to share.
We’d love to hear about who or what is inspiring you in the neighbourhood. To be a Good News Reporter, report online:
Visit: bit.ly/goodnews22
Email: charlotte@civicsquare.cc
— Indra Adnan, Politics of Waking Up
